


Carnivorous

by Jay_Wells



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Attempt at humour, Endangered Species, Florida, Gen, The Odd Life of Alexander Hamilton universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 17:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7062538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jay_Wells/pseuds/Jay_Wells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John, Alex and Gilbert go camping in Florida with the Mulligans and find a very interesting-dieted tortoise making its way across a four-lane highway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carnivorous

It was a hot August afternoon, and the three men were starting to regret visiting Florida.

Gilbert was trying to nap against the pleather seat, but his sweaty cheek kept sticking to the fabric. On the opposite side of the van, Alex examined a jar in which he kept the remains of all the mosquitoes he’d killed and counting the tally marks on the lid. He looked up and said, “Hey, John, you want me to drive for a bit?”

“No.” John pouted. “I can drive. Besides, you’ve never driven on a highway before and this is my dad’s van. You _know_ he’ll make me pay damages.”

Gilbert groaned and fanned himself with a brochure for an alligator farm. “Why is America so _hot?_ I regret coming to live here.”

“Oh, quit bitching.” Alex struggled against his seat belt and only succeeded in tightening it. He cursed and undid it all together, sighing in relief to not have it digging into his neck. “This was mild weather where I grew up.”

“Lucky you.” the Frenchman said sarcastically.

John’s shoulders were tense, and he praised God that the four-lane highway back to the campgrounds from the town weren’t congested. Then he saw something in the road and brought the six-passenger van to a sudden halt, sending Gilbert straining against his seatbelt with a choking noise, Alex flying from his seat and a mixture of mosquito corpses and groceries spilling across the floor of the vehicle. Alex got up, rubbing his head, to see John rescuing a tortoise from the middle of the four-lane highway. He felt a rush of fondness, despite his pounding head, that quickly morphed into suspicion when John didn’t put the thing in the safe field next to the road.

Instead, he carried it into the van and rested the creature, still cowering in its shell, next to the driver’s seat. Gilbert wrinkled his nose. “What do you plan on doing with that?”

“Keeping it.” He started up the van again, ignoring the horns and rude-but-understandable gestures from passing cars.

Alex climbed back into his seat and eyed the tortoise. “And you think I shouldn’t drive? You’re lucky you didn’t cause a wreck. Also, the landlady said ‘absolutely no pets.’”

“I won’t tell her if you don’t.”

“John -- ”

“I want the damn tortoise.”

Alex huffed and leant back in his seat. “Fine, but for the record, your driving is shit.”

“I wasn’t just going to run the poor baby over!”

Just then the “poor baby” poked it’s head out of its shell and locked its beady eyes on a bag of fried chicken. Slowly it took a step toward it.

The ensuing chaos was immediate.

“My god, it’s carnivorous!” Gilbert shrieked. “Get it away!”

Alex instinctively pulled his feet up onto the seat and felt silly for having done so. “What the actual fuck, Laurens? You picked the one half-baked, meat-eating tortoise in the world.”

“Everything’s an opportunistic carnivore,” John shouted over Gilbert’s terrified shrieks. “Don’t let it get the food, dumbass.”

John leant down, one hand on the wheel and his head barely peeking up over the dashboard, and held the tortoise down with one hand. It was amazing they made it back alive.

The pulled into the campsite where the Mulligans had parked their RV and got out. Gilbert was still shaking from the near-death experience. John was carrying the tortoise like a baby and not noticing it nibbling on his ear. His sat it down gently in front of Alex. “Watch him while we take in the groceries.”  
“Why do I have to?” Alex protested.

“‘Cause you love me the most.” John pulled the fried chicken out of the van along with a couple more bags and Alex could swear the tortoise followed his every move back to the house.

They didn’t return for them for a couple minutes, and he began to grow nervous at the thought of being alone with the tortoise. It definitely liked meat, and perhaps in biting John’s ear it acquired a taste for human flesh. He had to wonder if this was where death took him, with this beady-eyed tortoise. Would his friends come out to find it munching on his corpse? He shuddered at the thought. He flinched a bit when the turtle reared its head and shuffled forward, seemingly around him. He scooted back a couple feet, then stomped his foot vaguely in its path. “You shall not pass!”

It stopped, looked up at him, tilted its head and rolled its eyes. As it passed him, Alex stood and watched, wondering how he was going to explain to John that he’d let it go.

Just then, Gilbert and John returned with the Mulligans. Libby examined the tortoise’s shell. “Oh, I know what that is. They’re on the endangered species list in Florida.”

“Yeah,” Heracles chimed in, “it’s illegal to touch them.”

Gilbert’s eyes widened. “John, look what you’ve done!”

John rolled his eyes, and the tortoise stopped its slow progress across the campsite to look up at them. Without a word, John picked it up, carried it to the neighbouring site and set it down. “Alright, let’s eat.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on actual events that occurred when my family went to Florida when I was six.


End file.
